The Big Book of Science Fiction
Page 12
I could not resist the compassion of the mysterious invincible creatures, whether angels or demons, whom I believed to inhabit Mechanopolis. But then I was stricken by a terrible idea, the idea that the machines themselves had souls, mechanical souls, and that it was the machines themselves who felt pity for me. This idea made me tremble. I thought that now I was face-to-face with the race that dominated the dehumanized earth.
I rushed out like a madman and threw myself in front of the first electric tram that passed by. When I awoke from the blow I found myself once again in the oasis I had left behind. I started walking and came across the tent of some Bedouin, and when I met one of them, I embraced him in tears. How well we understood one another even without words! They gave me food, they cared for me, and at night I went out with them and, stretched out on the ground, looking up at the stars, we prayed together. There was not a single machine to be found nearby.
And ever since then I have developed a true hatred of what we choose to call progress, and even of culture itself, and I look everywhere for someone who is like me, a man like me, who laughs and cries just as I cry and laugh, and a place where there are no machines and where the days flow by with the same sweet Christian meekness as an undiscovered river flows through the virgin forest.
The Doom of Principal City
YEFIM ZOZULYA
Translated by Vlad Zhenevsky
Yefim Davidovich Zozulya (1891–1941) was a Soviet-era writer and editor noted for his satirical stories about the Soviet state. Born in Moscow, Zozulya spent part of his childhood in the manufacturing town of Łódź in Poland before going to school in Odessa, now part of the country of Ukraine. Both Łódź and Odessa were part of the Russian Empire when Zozulya lived there.
In 1914 Zozulya started writing short stories and moved to St. Petersburg (Petrograd) to pursue a full-time literary career as an author and editor, his genre of choice being satire. His first collection, The Doom of Principal City, was published in 1918. A resident of Moscow from 1919 till his final years, Zozulya took active part in the literary life of the era, encouraging younger authors and founding an influential literary magazine among other things.
His contemporaries describe him as writing “easily and quickly.” He considered literature a kind of fanciful sermon and preferred forms like the short stories, which he described as “shorter than a sparrow’s beak.” His work is rich with vivid worldly morals as well as symbolical and philosophical-satirical fables/tales, reminiscent of the contes philosophiques, which represented pressing social issues through allegorical images and situations. Later in his career Zozulya shifted to realism but the background of his stories still tended to be largely conventional, with few specific details about time and place. It may go without saying that Soviet realism-oriented critics did not approve of this approach and more than once Zozulya was jailed for engaging in revolutionary activities.
In the 1930s Zozulya tried his hand at larger forms, creating perhaps his most remarkable work, the novel The Workshop of Men (like the biblical “Fisher of Men”), which was published only partially and remained unfinished. As the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, he joined the editorial staff of a war newspaper after serving two months in the artillery troops but died from a severe illness at a military hospital on November 3. Despite his prominent position in the literary landscape of the prewar era, Zozulya’s name is virtually unknown among present-day readers; most of his work was never republished.
Zozulya wrote several stories with a science-fictional quality. In “Story of Ak and Humanity,” citizens vote to bestow total authority on their government, essentially making it totalitarian, and the government reciprocates with a demand that all citizens prove their right to exist, indicating that failure to comply will result in “departure from life” within twenty-four hours. His tale “Moscow of the Future” featured a community of fifty thousand writers, all in their twenties, with no children, with the implication that the children have been taken away to healthier, less subversive zones.
“The Doom of Principal City” may be one of the earliest depictions of dystopia in Russian (and perhaps world) history and represents his debut within these pages in the English language. The story also seems to contain an awareness of Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, an experimental, fragmented novel, much lauded by Vladimir Nabokov, that tells the story of a man ordered to set off a time bomb in the titular city in the run-up to the 1905 revolution. In “Doom…,” the surreal elements of the satire make the story timeless—well positioned to predict the absurdities and counterlogic of Soviet life to come.
THE DOOM OF PRINCIPAL CITY
Yefim Zozulya
Translated by Vlad Zhenevsky
1
Crowds assembled on the squares and crossroads that morning, sparse and inert. Unwashed, sleepy, disheveled, hastily dressed people rushed out of their houses to wander in uneasiness about the streets and greet one another with dejected sighing exclamations:
“They’ve come!”
“Yes. They’re here.”
Someone was reporting with his eyes closed, his arms pressed to the chest, “They’re here. I live on the outskirts, so I heard the sound of trumpets. They were celebrating. The music played all night long.”
“What about our army? Where’s our army?”
“They’re unable to put up a fight. According to the Chief General’s strategic plan that was published yesterday, we are weakened by two and six-tenths. It would’ve been madness to struggle. Soldiers locked themselves in the barracks. They say they’ve been betrayed.”
“Disgrace! What a disgrace!”
“Doom!”
“Music played all night long!”
“They’ll enter the city tonight.”
“Look! Look!”
One of the citizens, plain and seemingly sick, squatted and raised both his arms, his frightened and confused look fixed on the sky.
An airplane was circling high above Principal City.
A small dark clump came off it every few minutes and fell to the ground in a slanting irregular line.
“Run for your life!” Shouts were coming from every quarter. “Run for your life!”
Bending over, clutching their heads, dejected figures were running down the streets and hiding in the houses.
Yet they came out soon enough.
It emerged that the victorious enemy were throwing flowers off airplanes….Decidedly real, enormous bouquets of carnations and roses…
“Oh, those vile, cruel people!”
“Bandits!”
“Mean, filthy souls!”
Each citizen of Principal City, however peaceful, was scolding the conquerors in a most acrimonious way. Flowers—instead of yesterday’s bombs. Flowers tossed to those defeated, humiliated, and trampled on—that was wicked, infinitely hurtful mockery.
No one took those flowers. Two teenagers who picked them up out of curiosity were beaten up by a crowd and dumped off a bridge into the river.
Principal City acknowledged its disgrace at last.
Shops were closed. The tram was shut down.
And meanwhile in various parts of the city, upon streets, balconies, squares, and roofs, the others’ flowers lay about, an offensive patchwork of the others’ taunting joy, prompting sighs of grievance and despair from residents of Principal City.
2
Enemy troops were expected to enter the city triumphantly and march along the main streets, invoking ultimate desperation in the hearts of everyone.
However, not a single detachment ever appeared. The foe made camp far outside the city, and it was only in some remote outskirts that music was heard, a great number of—more than fifty, as it came to be known later—combined orchestras playing at once.
In the night fiery writings from the enemy’s word floodlights glowed above Principal City. Against the dark backdrop of the night sky, fiery verses by enemy poets were revealed. They told of the conquerors’ might, of their civility and mercifulness
. The verses were followed by blazing statements that the residents of Principal City would not be wronged, that their style of life would not be disturbed, and there was only one condition that the President would have to agree to. One condition was underlined.
After that, advertisements for enemy commercial firms were printed on the sky, praising soap, cocoa, watches, and shoes. The sky was entirely covered by these advertisements till dawn. Citizens wept in their houses. Coming up to the windows, they looked at the sky, read advertisements for bentwood furniture or hygienic mustache protectors, and—wept.
The next day was a quiet one. Music outside the city ceased. There were no more falling flowers. It was only in the night that multicolored advertisements—endless, endless—gleamed up in the sky again, so annoyingly, so brazenly, now representing smaller, marginal companies.
3
The President of Principal City summoned the most active Members of Parliament, representatives of the press, and the Chief General to tell them Principal City was perishing.
Everybody knew that: a lot had been written with regard to the downfall of Principal City long before the enemy won, yet they all were listening to the President respectfully—he was held in high esteem and was not to be blamed for the defeat.
Many of the Members of Parliament even wondered if it was necessary to express their sympathy to him as a sufferer and martyr.
“Principal City has fallen, citizens,” the President said. “We do not know the terms of peace yet but they will be horrific. I am calling for calm and patience.”
There was something in his words, a certain weightiness that set one’s mind at rest.
“We need to issue a proclamation,” a Member of Parliament suggested.
“Yes. Yes. Definitely. A proclamation. We need to elect a committee.”
The committee was elected, the proclamation drawn up.
“Citizens of Principal City!” it went. “I am calling on you to stay calm. No indiscretion shall be inflicted upon the conquerors. We shall not respond to any offenses. Do not pay regard to our enemies’ flowers, advertisements, and music. Be patient. Let Reason, the only ruler of the earth, help you; submit to its rightful authority.”
The proclamation did not help. There was firing to be heard in various parts of the city at night, from guns and cannons shooting at the pestilent advertisements that beclouded the sky. A large guerrilla party formed in one of the suburbs, setting off on their own to fight the victorious enemy.
The madmen suffered a terrible fate: they were disarmed, divided, forcefully washed, given new clothes, and made to listen to music, eat luxurious food, and revel in company with beautiful women.
Many took their own lives, many were put into lunatic asylums, while most, disgraced and ridiculed, victims to the temptation, returned to Principal City.
4
On the fifth day of the victory celebrations the enemy sent their truce envoys. They arrived unarmed and unescorted in an open car and stopped in front of the President’s residence. There were three of them: an old man, a woman, and a tall, humorless, squinting man of middle age, the most resolute and business-minded of all, by the look of him.
It turned out, however, that the actual head of the delegation was the woman—of an average height, bony, with a pleasant smile and colorless eyes.
She declared to the President of Principal City that her nation bore no malice to the vanquished and wished neither violence nor revenge, their only demand being consent to build a new city above Principal City, new squares and streets over its squares and streets, new houses and bridges over its houses and bridges.
The President rose from his chair, flung up his arms, and—cried uncontrollably.
The enemy’s envoys stepped back from him and turned to the wall. The woman was surprised, shifting her shoulders as if at a loss.
When the President stopped crying, she came up to him and said, with no sympathy, yet without harshness, “I cannot grasp why you are so worried, Mr. President, perhaps you have not understood—not a single resident of the city, not a single building will suffer any harm. We will be constructing a city of our own above and over Principal City. I hope you have heard about our technologies. Of course we are going to cause you some inconvenience: in front of your windows, steel girders will stand—foundations of our houses and streets. But that’s a small matter, isn’t it? Then, obviously, it will be darker than now down here, it may even happen that some districts will get totally dark—well, you’ll have to use electricity. There’s no getting around it. My nation’s will is sacred, and I am not entitled to change it.”
The President of Principal City was silent.
The enemies were terse, adequate, and businesslike. They were not sentimental. Besides, they knew clearly what they wanted, and knew that no power on the earth could prevent them from fulfilling their aspirations.
“Why are you doing this?” the President asked, and sighed loudly. He felt at once that his question had arisen from weariness rather than from political savvy.
“Yes,” he said to correct himself. “I was asking for no reason. But could you say what you are going to do in Upper City?”
“We are going to live there,” the old man replied in the woman’s stead, and coughed scornfully.
“Odd.”
“There is nothing odd about it,” the woman said.
“What you want is to ruin us,” the President said with a sigh. This remark of his was no more successful with the enemy’s envoys than the previous ones. “No, gentlemen, you’d better kill me! Do it!” the President exclaimed tragically, making a gesture of despair.
The envoys winced: their country, rich in industrial equipment, was poor in pathos, so the President’s pathos was outright disgusting to them.
“Kill me! I can’t take such an unheard-of disgrace! To live down here, in the dark below you, to meet you ceaselessly, to mix with you— Oh!”
“I beg your pardon,” the woman interrupted, “but the residents of Principal City will not be seeing or meeting us. Except perhaps during the first ten years, until construction down here is finished—and you will not see us after that.”
“How come?”
“The residents of Principal City will be strictly forbidden to enter Upper City.”
“Kill me! Kill me! I don’t want to talk to you! Goddamn a culture if it can be so cruel! Destroy Principal City, turn it into ruins first, and build your new city after that. I am going to arrange an uprising this very day. Go away. I deem any negotiations redundant.”
“This is unwise of you,” the woman responded coolly. “An uprising is a savage matter. A pointless one, too. We are very strong. But I should say, your culture is most secure.”
“How dare you speak of our culture?” the President cried with the same pathos, which was aplenty in Principal City.
“That’s exactly what we are speaking of. We are speaking of the genuine culture. Do you really think we’d have spared you unless we cared about preserving your culture, unless we respected the idea of continuity of cultures? We see your nation as an anachronism but we think highly of your culture, so we are going to build our city above yours only because we want to possess and preserve your buildings, your wonderful museums, your libraries and temples. That’s the only reason. We want to have your old, beautiful culture in the cellar, so to speak, and to age it like wine….”
5
The President of Principal City made a request to the conquerors to remove commercial advertisements from the sky, at least for one night, so that the authorities could inform the population of the peace terms and the victors’ intention to build a new city above Principal City.
The enemy’s headquarters responded that there was no real need to use the sky for that purpose—it could be done by way of printed appeals—but if it was the sky that the President wished to employ, it was still possible to negotiate with advertisers who had taken the sky on lease and to compensate them for the incurred losses.
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br /> While this issue was being discussed in Parliament, a compromising centrist movement revealed itself for the first time. One of the speakers for the moderate groups made an extensive speech seeking to prove that from their perspective—that of the victors—the enemy was right and could not act other than they did. Because of this, taking the path of endless bickering and obviously futile struggle was unwise. It was necessary—without delay, if possible—to work out the general terms of the agreement, and to take up struggle when conditions became favorable.
This speaker’s speech caused a great outrage. He was even accused of venality and betraying Principal City, and three members of extreme groups had to be ushered out of the assembly hall by force.
“Haven’t you by chance won a contract to build a few streets in Upper City?” one of the three shouted, delirious, to the hapless speaker.
With regard to that last reproach, the President of Principal City—haggard looking, having not slept at all in a few days—informed the assembly that the enemy had no intention of offering any contracts to residents of Principal City, which was already known from the Statute of Construction of Upper City, so the reproach by members of extreme groups had not only been undeservedly insulting but also entirely groundless.
After that the President suggested forgoing fruitless debate and electing a committee to negotiate with the leaseholders of the sky so as to clear it of advertisements for one night.
The committee was elected.
By evening the matter was settled: the government had a half of the heavenly dome to notify the public of momentous news.
It was the President in his own person who wrote the announcement. Endorsed by Parliament, in the night it bloomed in straight, stern, and sinister red letters on the blue, mysteriously indifferent dome of the sky.